Top 10 working-class TV series for Labor Day viewing

DavidB. Wilkerson

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Television's long history has given us lots of celebrated blue-collar characters over the years, but for various reasons most of them have been relegated to sitcoms -- Ralph Kramden, Archie Bunker, Roseanne Conner, Al Bundy.

"If we try to think of the big hit shows about these characters, we can get to 10 of them pretty quickly," said Robert Thompson, the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, in an interview. "But then you start having to think hard before you get further. I think sometimes doing blue-collar stuff is the dicey thing to do. It may just be easier to do these unexamined people who seem to be doing well, even though their jobs wouldn't indicate it."

Take "shows like 'Friends,' for example, where these people seem to be living upper middle-class lives in Manhattan apartments, and we ignore the fact that many of them haven't got jobs that would support that kind of lifestyle in that city."

Harry Castleman and Walter Podrazik are the authors of "Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television," now available in an expanded second edition. Here are their picks, with additional comments from Thompson, who chose many of the same programs.

1. "The Honeymooners"(CBS CBS, +0.00%, 1955-56 -- The "Classic 39" episodes); also recurring sketch on "Cavalcade of Stars" (Dumont, 1951-52); and on "The Jackie Gleason Show" (CBS, 1952-55, 1957-59, 1962-67). Also on four reunion specials during the 1970s.

DVD: Classic 39 available from Paramount Home Entertainment, about $29.95; Six boxed sets of "Lost Episodes" containing sketches from "Cavalcade of Stars" and "The Jackie Gleason Show," 1951-57, from MPI Home Entertainment, suggested retail price $49.95 each, now out of print; four boxed sets of sketches taped in color during 1966-67 season of "The Jackie Gleason Show," packaged as "The Color Honeymooners," from MPI, around $20 each. "The Honeymooners: Second Honeymoon" and "Valentine Special" reunion broadcasts, MPI, about $9 each.

By 1955, Jackie Gleason was exhausted. The endless demands of supervising and playing several roles on his weekly CBS variety show over the last three seasons had taken a toll. He told the network he would have to take a break.

During the 1955-56 season, he would take one of "The Jackie Gleason Show's" most popular recurring sketches on the live program, "The Honeymooners," and turn it into a half-hour, filmed sitcom. The sketch, first seen in 1951, focused on the weekly travails of Ralph Kramden (Gleason), a blustery, scheming but ultimately lovable bus driver, his loving if sarcastic wife Alice (Audrey Meadows) and their upstairs neighbors Ed and Trixie Norton (Art Carney and Joyce Randolph).

"It took a while to find the right note for Ralph Kramden, and to establish the right situations for the other characters. Some of the early ones are pretty rough," said Castleman. "But by 1954, they had hit their stride."

The filmed sitcom version was not a big ratings success for CBS, and was gone after one season. However, those 39 shows, seen over and over in syndication, became known as "The Classic 39," permanently establishing "The Honeymooners" as a television icon.

"The only show in all of television that ever looked like a neighborhood I had grown up in, with people I had met, was 'The Honeymooners,'" Podrazik said. "There is respect for those characters, and the situations they're in."

"I always pick 'The Honeymooners' when people ask 'What was the best show [overall]," Castleman commented. "It's really funny, but it's also poignant, and really smacks of knowledge of the world that it comes from. It's the life Jackie Gleason lived when he was growing up in Brooklyn, and that feeling just exudes from that series. It's the most realist of blue-collar type shows ever done."

2. "All In The Family"(CBS, 1971-1979)

DVD: Seasons 1-6 available from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, can be found for about $18-$20 each; Season 7 to be released Oct. 5 by Shout! Factory, $29.95 suggested retail price.

For all of the controversy that "All In The Family" generated as it explored themes of racism, sexism, breast cancer, rape, menopause, the Vietnam War and so many other topics, it remained grounded in a working-class sensibility, as personified by loading-dock worker and part-time cab driver Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor).

"The thing I appreciated about Archie Bunker, over the long run, was that although he was a straw man for various issues, he was willing, even in the early seasons, to make adjustments," Podrazik noted.

The Bunker character grew as the series went along. Podrazik is fond of a two-part episode from the show's eighth season, "Archie and the KKK." Archie joins a club affiliated with the hate group, but recants when they threaten to burn a cross on Mike and Gloria's lawn -- and maybe his own if he tries to stop them.

"Archie says look, I had a blood transfusion, so I have some black blood in me," Podrazik recalled. " 'And if you don't behave, I'm gonna call my black brothers out!' He knew how to play them."

The show's creators made sure the other characters were more than one-dimensional foils for Archie. Edith (Jean Stapleton), constantly called a "dingbat" by her husband and ordered into the kitchen for a beer or food, proves in several episodes that she has an inner strength that keeps Archie in line.

Though Mike (Rob Reiner) is most often seen correcting whatever outrageous ideas Archie has about minorities, the government, women, etc., he is not above a certain level of hypocrisy. On a number of occasions, he doesn't listen to his wife's point of view on important issues, telling her in one episode to "go make some cookies" while he talks to his male friends. In another show, he becomes angry when he is passed over for a job for an affirmative action candidate, much to the glee of Archie.

Gloria (Sally Struthers) is shown to have inherited much of her father Archie's temper, and it comes out in disrespectful ways even to long-suffering Edith. Late in the program's run, she cheats on Mike, shocking everyone.

One of the best representatives, Podrazik said, of the Norman Lear-Bud Yorkin school of socially relevant sitcoms of the 1970s, the hilarious adventures of cantankerous African-American junkman Fred G. Sanford (Redd Foxx) and his son Lamont (Demond Wilson).

DVD: Seasons 1-9 available from Starz/Anchor Bay Home Entertainment, for about $15-$25 each.

Plastic-factory worker Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr) and her husband Dan (John Goodman), owner of a motorcycle shop, do their best to care for each other and three kids.

"For all its faults -- and let's graciously omit the season when the Conners won the lottery, and undercut the entire premise of the show -- I think that's the one that gets closest to 'The Honeymooners' in dealing with some real issues that people in a poorer situation might be facing," Castleman commented.

5. "Married With Children" (Fox, 1987-1997)

DVD: Seasons 1-11 available from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, available from about $14-$25 each.

Shoe salesman Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) struggles through daily life with his wife Peg (Katey Sagal) and their children Kelly (Christina Applegate) and Bud (David Faustino). "Here you have the show that really set the stage for racier humor in a blue-collar setting," said Castleman.

"I always found 'Married With Children' hilarious," Podrazik added. "It holds up well in syndication."

DVD: Seasons 1-13 and 20 available from Fox Home Entertainment, available for about $21 each. Blu-ray: Seasons 13 and 20 available from Fox for $32-$39.

"This one is interesting," Thompson said of the long-running animated comedy, "because at first glance you'd include 'The Simpsons,' but someone who works at a nuclear power plant should be making a pretty good salary. Now, we assume Homer Simpson is so incompetent that he probably isn't being paid that much, but normally that would be a pretty high-paying job."

"Even though 'The Simpsons' has that kind of trashy feel to it, it may be more along the lineage of 'Father Knows Best' and 'Leave It to Beaver.' It's interesting that Springfield was named for the town in 'Father Knows Best.'"

7. "The Fugitive" (ABC, 1963-1967)

DVD: Seasons 1-3, two volumes per season, from Paramount Home Entertainment, available for about $20-$35 each. Season 4, Vol. 1 to be released in October.

This probably seems like a strange choice, since Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen), falsely convicted for the murder of his wife, is obviously a member of the professional class.

However, Kimble, after escaping from a train en route to the death house, has to take a wide variety of odd jobs -- migrant worker, bartender, oil rig worker -- to support himself while he tries to elude the intrepid Lt. Gerard (Barry Morse).

"He becomes the bluest of blue-collar workers in the sense that he can't stick his head up at all, and he comes to understand how other people live," Castleman said. "Even though he of course still has the refinement of education, which comes through in various situations, he's got to lead an entirely different life."

8. "Laverne and Shirley" (ABC, 1976-1983)

DVD: Seasons 1-4, available from Paramount Home Entertainment, about $20-$25 each.

"That one does stand out because most of the shows we're talking about involve male central characters," Syracuse's Thompson said. "But the fact that they worked in a brewery assembly line, and lived a lifestyle we hadn't seen much on television, make it a good example."

9. "Open All Night "(ABC, 1981-82)

Not available on DVD.

George Dzundza, later to star in early episodes of "Law & Order," plays Gordon Feester, co-owner, with his wife Gretchen (Susan Tyrrell) of a 24-hour convenience store. Harry Castleman has a special fondness for this short-lived ABC sitcom.

"It was a really nice idea, and I liked it because the main character was not a blustery, funny kind of Ralph Kramden character, but was much more of a regular guy," Castleman said. "Things happened to him, and he reacted."

The show is populated by funny characters who show up in the convenience store in the wee hours of the morning, among them Gretchen's lazy son from a previous marriage, and a cop played by co-producer Jay Tarses.

10. "Homefront" (ABC, 1991-1993)

Not available on DVD.

A drama set just after World War II in the mythical town of River Run, Ohio, "Homefront" was the saga of the middle-class Metcalf family, who work in a factory; the Sloans, who own the factory, and the Davises, African-Americans who are servants for the Sloans.

"What struck me about 'Homefront' is that it's one of the few series in which you actually saw factory workers," Walter Podrazik recalled. "Women had filled in during the war, and then when the war ended, they had to go back to being housewives. So there's some of that tension here. But it's one of the best examples of treating workers with some respect."

Thompson also admired "Homefront." "It was a brilliantly done show that dealt with a lot of stuff in some really serious ways."

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